The More I Look
by Erik's Champion
Summary: Ryou's life is a sea of mysteries and incomplete memories. The harder he tries to understand what his life is becoming, the more convoluted the picture becomes. So how can he hold onto his sanity when he believes his mind is slowly being infiltrated?


-I-

-I-

"Do you care to explain, Mr. Bakura, how you were found in Mr. Takaki's shop at one o'clock this morning?"

Ryou didn't want to look up. He hated being called on in class, when he didn't have the answer. Sitting in the icy cold folding metal chair, kneading his clammy hands, he was overcome with that familiar sinking feeling of knowing that things had gotten inexplicably out of control and having no idea how they had gotten there.

The simple answer was no. No, he didn't care to explain, he couldn't explain. The list of phenomena in Ryou's life that he couldn't explain had quickly become more fantastical and outrageous than several well-known roadside attractions, the kind that attract people from all over the world because they simply don't have anywhere better to go. He spun his fingers around each other for a moment, searching for a satisfactory answer. Even after his hands ceased moving, the spinning didn't stop.

"…I—I, I don't know. I'm sorry!...It just…sort of _happened_…"

He heard a sigh from the other end of the table. It was a gentle sound. Ryou could hear the loss in it, the loss of hope, logic, understanding. He tentatively raised his eyes, tracing the formidable figure before him, large and overpowering like a rockslide that hadn't started to fall yet, but would before he could run far enough away. Those eyes, sharp and stern and terrifying, examined him, judged him, appraised him as if he were a dead object that was up for sale at an antique auction. _Hmmm…fairly good condition, considering it's age. And very rare. But, _damaged_, damaged beyond repair…_

"It. Just. Happened?_ Happened_, that the police found you in the middle of the wreckage of what had _once_ been Mr. Takaki's business. _Happened_, that you were surrounded by broken glass and damaged merchandise? _Happened_ that you were the only one around for miles at that un-Godly hour? Mr. Bakura, things like that do not just _happen_."

No. That's where he was wrong.

He strained his memory, untangled the chains that were tightly coiled in his mind in an attempt to get them back into neat, linear form. He saw the remnants of his memory from a long way off, obscured by fog and uncertainty. The last he could remember, he had been warm and content, curled up in a cave of delightfully snuggly blankets, idly watching television. He couldn't remember what the program had been, he hadn't really been paying attention. He had been watching the bright colors, clinging to the sound so that he didn't have to listen to the encompassing silence that would have taken its place had he turned the television off. He had lost himself in those vivid images.

And now he really was lost.

-II-

Ryou didn't watch the television anymore. It had gone on the long list of prohibited activities, and its face had been covered with one of those familiar, thick black curtains. His living room was starting to look like a morgue, dreary, dark, and heavy. The kind of place where people felt guilty for smiling, being happy, even being alive.

Deciding that the television was an unsafe diversion, he turned to secondary options. Books. There was _The Invisible Man_, _Faust_, _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, _The Metamorphosis_, _The Trial._ The books at his house only lasted so long. Soon he was exercising the power of his library card, tearing through volume after volume of delicious, distracting words. Shortly after, his card was revoked. The well-meaning librarian sweetly explained that due to the rather dramatic number of books he had failed to return or came back damaged or vandalized, he was no longer able to check out books from the Domino City library. He had tried to explain that this was impossible, his respect for the written word was only matched by his full-fledged admiration for public institutions.

That was simply something that he would never do.

Ryou, regretfully, gave up on books. For a brief segment of time, he poured himself into dusty LPs and whining guitar chords, but music only lasted so long. And then the silence came again. His saving grace came in the form of orderly keys, the mathematical language of alternating 0s and 1s, the precise tapping sound of his finger tips colliding with the keyboard.

On the internet, there was everything. It was a delightful, bottomless chest of treasures that he thrilled in uncovering, peeling it apart layer by layer until he could see it in its barest, most vulnerable form. He was mesmerized, couldn't bear to turn away even for a moment. The touch of sunlight became unfamiliar, the sensation of wind running through his hair more foreign still. But he was never alone, and the house was never silent so long as his fingers kept moving.

-III-

"Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociative identity disorder is thought to stem from trauma experienced by the person with the disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self."

-IV-

Depression. That was hard to judge. He had never felt particularly _un_happy, but, now that he came to think of it, life certainly could be more enjoyable.

Mood Swings. He could eliminate that one fairly easily. His mood may not be particularly exuberant, but it was definitely constant. As far as he could tell, anyway.

Suicidal Tendencies. That was simply impossible. Ryou was horrified of getting a paper cut or catching a cold, and those fears essentially eliminated any means he would have had for committing suicide. That is, if he had ever had the desire to.

Sleep Disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleepwalking). Due to the high demands of school work, chores, and desperately trying to find a job to supplement the usually scantly income provided by his parents, Ryou hardly slept as it was. It would be getting more than three hours a night that he would have considered unusual.

Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Phobias (flashbacks, reactions to stimuli or "triggers"). Well, one didn't really mean anything. Everyone panics from time to time, right?

Compulsions and Rituals. Like, bathing? Eating breakfast at the same time each morning? Is that what they meant? No, surely not. He did things regularly, from force of habit, but surely there was nothing _compulsive_ or _ritualistic_ about it.

Psychotic-like Symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations). The sound that disturbed him was silence. But that was because…

Palms sweating, eyes bulging, Ryou flung himself from the chair in front of the computer. No, he hadn't just seen that. It was impossible, simply impossible. He longed to un-see it, to will away the letters and wipe the thought of ever seeing them from his mind like the streaks on a window in a Windex commercial. But the memory wouldn't go away, it bore into his brain where the letters burned and massacred. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight, expunging the memory with every ounce of energy that he still had, but the harder he tried to wipe it away the more resolutely it clung to him like the dry, bitter cold of walking outside in the snow.

He tried to turn to the computer off without looking at it, as if he thought it would burn him, but the monitor transfixed his eyes like the sight of a gory accident. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to believe it was possible, but was strangely fascinated by the site of something that had gone so horribly and violently wrong.

He never turned the computer back on. He made due with the silence.

-V-

"Red seven on black eight."

Ryou spun around in his seat, nearly sending his neatly compiled stacks of cards tumbling to the floor. Wild eyed and unnerved, Ryou readjusted to the world around him. That one voice, polite and forthcoming as it was, had in a moment removed the key stone of the arc that Ryou had spent several hours painstakingly constructing, causing the whole production to come crashing to the ground in a flurry of dust and rock.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Bakura-kun." Yuugi blushed and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. "I just thought that you might like some company."

Ryou chose not to comment on the fact that, the game being called _Solitaire_, having company more or less defeated the purpose. "Ah, that's all right, Yuugi-kun. You just surprised me, that's all." He smiled and followed Yuugi's suggestion, delicately placing the seven of diamonds on its respective base. Yuugi hovered over his shoulder for a moment, watching his hands dart from one shiny card to another.

"You play this game, too?" Yuugi asked, taking the seat opposite Ryou at the table. His eyes were bright and merry, but on closer inspection, Ryou thought he could detect something in them that was slightly…darker and sharper, like cut glass or barbed wire. The realization set off a twang of memory in Ryou's mind. He looked away from Yuugi's eyes and couldn't bring himself to meet them again. There was something about that boy, despite his sweetness and natural energy. It felt almost like there was another layer to him, almost invisible, but always working in the background to accomplish its own objective like a virus infiltrating a computer.

He nodded emphatically, not daring to lift his eyes from the cards on the table. "All the time." With a good hand, he could win the game in under a minute, with a poor hand, under one and a half.

Yuugi smiled again, his spongy mind absorbing each of Ryou's delicate moves, hardly able to contain the excitement he felt when a new and thrilling game was playing out before him. "Remember," he said, a playful nagging in his voice, "you promised that you would let us over to play 'Monster World!'"

Ryou mirrored Yuugi's smile, but his version was smaller, covered by a curtain of restraint. "I know. I haven't forgotten." Yuugi seemed pleased, his face lit up as if he had just stepped into the sunlight after wandering in shadows.

"Great!" Yuugi cheered and bounded from his seat, nearly clapping his hands in anticipation. Riled up the promise of such future revelry, he called out cheerily behind him, "Good bye, Bakura-kun! See you later!"

Ryou turned from his game to call his own farewell, but by the time he had lifted and rotated his head, Yuugi had vanished. However, the shape of his eyes remained, a subtly piquant layer behind his usual feathery softness. It made him shiver, want to curl up within himself. More than anything, he didn't want to hurt any more people.

Red ten on black jack. And that memory wouldn't go away.

-VI-

Ryou hated things that were empty. They seemed like they needed to be filled too badly. They didn't have a purpose until they were filled. Before that, they were…nothing, just an empty shell waiting for their master.

That was what Ryou thought as he stared at the paper coffee cup in his hands. He had been planning to fill the cup, but he had come within range of smelling the actual food in the cafeteria and had turned away in disgust. He couldn't drink, eat, be happy, until he knew what had happened to them.

He twitched sharply like a wounded animal when a sweet-faced nurse came up behind him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. "Mr. Bakura?" She hadn't meant anything by her words, but they sounded cruel to him, like an accusation.

He leapt from his chair—nearly knocking over the side table in the process—and turned to the nurse with a desperate yearning for exoneration. In a tepid, milky voice, he asked, "Are—are they alright?" He ran his hand frantically through his hair until it looked rough and misshapen. His distress must have been more evident than he thought, because the nurse's eyes softened in sympathy.

"Mr. Bakura," she tilted her head gently to the side as if she were addressing an invalid whose delicate psychological condition couldn't comprehend the idea of illness. "Can you tell us what happened when—"

Ryou shook his head furiously, as if trying to ward off an evil spirit. "It—I don't—we were just playing!" He shot the nurse a beseeching glance, hoping that her neatly starched white coat and smartly polished shoes would lend some sensibility to the situation. It didn't work. She looked just as confused as he felt.

"Perhaps you kids shouldn't take your games so seriously." She meant it as a joke, but Ryou saw no humor in it. She left him standing, alone and detached, like a tiny uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean, with nothing to hold on to. The television buzzed on in the background.

It's not possible for people to go into comas by playing a game, so he had thought.

-VII-

It was lighter than it should have been. This time of year, when the daylight hours were so sparse, it still should have been fairly dark when he first opened his eyes. But here he lay, safe and snug under thick layers of blankets, with the sun shinning full in his face. Wearily, and slightly apprehensive about what this sudden change in routine could mean, Ryou reached over for his clock and pointed it towards him.

He was used to having his parents wake him up, but of course, they weren't here and he was late.

There was no time for thinking. In an instant, he bolted out of bed, and, with adrenaline pumping, tore through the recently vacated house. He took a quick inventory in his head, trying to make split-second decisions about what was worth skipping if it meant he might make it to school on time. Breakfast he could skip if need be, but in the arena of personal hygiene, matters became a bit more fuzzy.

Running into the bathroom, he stumbled in the doorway as he tried to change clothes and brush his teeth at the same time. He tripped over his ill-fitting layers of clothing he half fell, half collapsed on the cool, tile floor.

It was 7:45. He had exactly 15 minutes to finish changing, brush his teeth, run to the bus stop that was conveniently located four impossibly long blocks away, make a bus transfer (that was almost always late anyway) and make another insane sprint to his desk and somehow do it all without suffering from or inflicting some kind of fatal injury. His shoulders were quaking, his vision was blurred, he longed to call out for help, but of course, there was no one there to hear him. He felt like crying, but that would be a waste of time under the circumstances. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to stand, either. Standing up would mean excepting his fate, resigning himself to the lonely life of personal responsibility that he was feeling very ill equipped to handle. Perhaps, he thought, if he kept sitting there on the floor, he could stay a child forever, unburdened by the weight of independence.

He curled his arms around his chest, hugged himself tightly because there was no one else around to do it for him. His head was throbbing from withholding tears and his legs were shaking. Why, why did they have to leave him all alone in this, huge cavernous house? Ryou sniffled heavily and closed his eyes, trying to imagine that he hadn't suddenly come to a crossroads that would determine the course of the rest of his day, if not the remainder of his undeveloped life.

_They left you. Are you really so surprised, after all? People are like that—unreliable._

Ryou jolted awake as if he had just been doused in cold water. Those were not his thoughts, words spoken in a voice that was not his own. Those sounds were cold, malicious, resentful, none of which were feelings he ever would have attributed to himself. It had to be the stress, the chaotic morning rush, that was creating these sounds that were bouncing around inside him. He sprung from the floor, ready to jolt into action and reclaim whatever control of the morning he might have had. Analyzing the top of the counter below him, he felt like all of his toiletries had been disassembled and put back together inside out. Everything looked foreign and useless, completely beyond his ability to do anything with it.

_Look, all alone. Unable to do anything. You should learn not to put your trust in the wrong people, people who will leave you alone and what? Helpless. _

More thoughts that were not his own, words that did not belong. He felt like his head had been removed and plunged into a giant fish tank. Eyes burning, he pressed his fingers into his forehead, trying to make everything solid and stable again. There were piercing pains shooting through his skull, making him feel like a tower about to fall. He tried to shut the words out, but they were coming on stronger and faster until they were not individual words at all, but a constant stream of unbridled consciousness that he was unable of shutting off.

Struggling to regain composure, he delicately opened his eyes, but was shocked by what he saw. His toothbrush, floss, boxes of band aides and bottles of shampoo no longer looked kind and familiar, but were obviously some kind of dark and wicked means of torture. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. These items were poison, twisted, nightmarish products of a world to which he did not belong. Sweet dripping down his forehead, stomach contorting in apprehension, he met his own eyes in the mirror.

And they weren't his. Sure, they were the same color, in the same location, but they had razor sharp points and were as solid as stone walls. These were not his eyes, but the eyes of someone who looked remarkably like him. Staring him the face were the eyes of someone who knew what it felt like to live alone, to be self-reliant, to run unhindered from place to place without a second glance or painful waves of loneliness or nostalgia. The sight horrified him, but he couldn't bare to look away. That unfamiliar glower filled him with cold apprehension, but he wanted those eyes to be _his_. Free, ungoverned, and unregretful. They were bold, adult, and independent.

Ryou didn't make it to school on time. The next day, he made a trip to the local home décor store and purchased several thick black tablecloths. With great care and precision, he covered every mirror in the house. At first, he had been hesitant to cover the mirrors in his parents' room, but knew that he must take every available precaution. All the while, he steadfastly repeated a mantra, or many that slowly blended together as the time dragged on: My parents love me, they didn't leave me, they're coming back, it's only temporary. After about an hour of diligent redecorating, the overall effect was comforting, if slightly Lestat-ian.

However, he wasn't trying to avoid an unreachable reflection that only showed how far from human he was, he feared seeing the face that was far too tangible and far too close who thought he was close to becoming.

-VIII-

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct or split identities or personality states that continually have power over the person's behavior. With dissociative identity disorder, there's also an inability to recall key personal information that is too far-reaching to be explained as mere forgetfulness. With dissociative identity disorder, there are also highly distinct memory variations, which fluctuate with the person's split personality.

-IX-

He never had to be afraid of hurting Amané. There, she was safe from these unexplainable incidents that were beginning to plague his adolescent years with increasingly more vigor. Above, around, perhaps inside him, she was everywhere, always accessible when he needed her, but always safely contained and cherished in his memory where no earthly forces could damage her.

_Amané—_

Usually he asked her questions about his own life, a futile attempt to draw the attention from his own affairs. Today, however, he couldn't bare to let his own questions go unvoiced, even if he knew she would not be able to provide an answer.

_How are you? I've been fine, I suppose. Do you remember Raito? He's still there, which is rather odd because the weather's been getting warmer. Maybe next year we can make him some friends, wouldn't that be fun? Father is off on one of his trips again, so the house is very empty and quiet._

_The only problem is, sometimes it doesn't feel completely empty. You know those times when you would wake up because you thought you heard someone coming up the stairs but it was only the floorboards creaking? That's kind of how I feel, except sometimes it feels like more than floorboards. _

_Thank you for your visit the other day, it was a lot of fun! Who would have thought the neighbors would be so upset about a few broken windows? I feel bad about what happened, but I had too much fun to feel as bad as I would like to. We should play together again sometime—only we'll be more careful to not break anything. _

_Ryou_

He never wanted to worry her. He never really had to worry, for or about her. What he really wanted was to see her, really see her. She always appeared shrouded in haze, as if she had been standing a lake in the early morning. There were nights when he would lie in his bed, listening to the creaking floorboards, and would long to pull that burly image closer to him. So close, it would be impossible to distinguish them.

But when his dreams were haunted by ghostly figures mumbling about things that he couldn't understand, when his home was eternally silent, what he needed was her light and her laughter to fill the empty space that engulfed him. He longed for her sweet reassurances that he could wear around his neck like a lucky charm that could tell him that he was never truly alone.

-X-

Inside the house, it was warm, but Ryou couldn't stand to be warm when his insides felt so icy and fallow. He was looking for a mirror—something that would reflect his mood with absolute alacrity down to the smallest detail. He found that outside, in the cold, biting air, thick drifts of snow, and unfeeling white sky that towered above him, high and detached and distant. With every step that took him further from his house's sweet, glowing windows the cold intensified, but Ryou reveled in the feeling, a bittersweet reminder that he was still alive.

In the days since Ryou had left the graveyard, he had shed more than his uncomfortable formal shoes and heavy black blazer. He was ill prepared to be walking in the snow now, but the thought that it might have been wise to apply more layers had never occurred to him. He had been too eager to set foot outdoors, to feel his feet sink deep into thick, watery mounds so snow. They fell so low so fast, he wondered if he would be able to pick them up or move ever again. He had wanted to feel his fingers go numb, and he wanted that blessed numbness to spread everywhere that the cold could reach. Most importantly, he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, which suddenly seemed so big and so strong that it seemed it would take more than one world and one time to contain them.

It was something that his parents could never understand. To them, there were only two states of being, immensely different and eternally irreconcilable. Black and white, left and right, Ryou wasn't comfortable making those types of uncompromising judgments. He chose to walk straight, wherever that path might lead him.

From a great distance, he could hear his father calling his name—probably worried that another child had fallen to the wayside. Ryou chose to ignore him. If he wanted to find him badly enough, there wouldn't be much of a challenge. While their backyard was larger than average—especially by Japanese standards—it was still contained. As sorely as Ryou might wish he could truly run away, those four solid walls always kept him safely within the bounds of other people and always reachable. There was no real threat to his safety so long as he was enclosed, contained, held captive. It was a bitter feeling, he was tied down by the limitations of the future, dragged by the past, but Amané had in an instant developed a power to become a part of some eternal present that he could never truly take part in in his present form.

'Dead' was an ugly word. The euphemisms for it weren't any better; they were stained by the same cruel idea that rendered Amané, his dearest friend and compatriot, utterly unreachable. When he had first heard it in relation to someone that he knew, the word had charred him. He had tried to pull away from it like he might whisk his hand from a hot burner. The very sound of it scorned it, defiled his mind and reverberated through the air like a horrible mistake. As painful as it had been, Ryou had forced himself to accept the word for what it was: what Amané was to him now. But now, standing ankle-deep in snow and watching the intricate patterns his breath left in the minty-blue air, the word did not seem to reflect what he felt Amané now was.

If she was dead, truly dead, nothing more than a rejected body encased under several feet of iron and dirt, or a pretty picture of a little girl with wings soaring miles above him, why did she feel so immediate, so tangible, as if she were there beating next to his heart? Perhaps being dead—if that indeed was what she was—didn't mean that she was far removed. Maybe she was just like the prop in a magic trick, waiting in the wings for the moment of the big finale. Still breathing, but safely contained where no human eyes could see her or human vices harm her. It was highly plausible that she was still there, beside him, waiting for the appropriate moment to reveal herself to him.

And when she returned it would be just like old times. They would play the game of world domination and her soul would not be weathered by the passing of time. The thought made him smile more than he would have thought possible. He whispered to himself, "Yes, that's exactly how it will be…forever." There was a resoluteness in his voice that he usually lacked, a steadfast determination to see the future bend to his deepest desires.

From a long way off, he heard his father again. Ryou marveled at how his voice sounded so flat, so dull, when Amané's sweet whispers, so close to his ears, seemed to bubble and shine with her natural vibrancy. Her words were gentle, affectionate, and full of hope as she whispered, in a voice he was certain only he was capable of hearing, "Ryou, Ryou, this way, come over here." He followed her voice, he had no choice but to. The very inflections of her voice seemed to melt the snow and announce that spring was arriving early.

Ryou followed her invisible form to a tall, imposing snowman that had stood in the far corner of their yard since the first snowfall that winter. He was impressed, but not surprised, to see that it was still standing. He and Amané had constructed it together, and she had cried when their father had told her that it would melt with the coming of the warm spring weather. She had wanted their creation to stand forever, an eternal testimonial to their momentous achievement. She had named it Raito.

Standing next to the snowman, Ryou was overcome with a sense of awe and awakening, the kind of which he had never felt at any religious ceremony, no matter the magnitude. Staring into those entrancing, obsidian eyes, he knew more definitely and profoundly than he knew that two plus two equals four that this was his lost sister, before him, suddenly found, everywhere around him, and somehow inside him, lying dormant for the moment when they could at last be reunited. Her words lost their shape and reformed like lumps of well-worked clay, molded in the hands of some clever artisan into a language that sounded as ancient as sandstone and running water. Ryou was transfixed, stunned by the perfumed voice that he could have, under certain circumstances, ascribed to himself.

As suddenly as a friendly little wave can blossom into a tsunami and swallow and beach whole, Ryou was overcome by the intensity of his own emotions and turned to run from this beacon of both light and uncertainty. As he turned—not without difficulty in the snow—he saw his own heavy footprints, carving a deliberate trail in the snow, but next to his own there was a second set—lighter, more delicate, as if the person who had made them had never really been there at all.

-XI-

What does it feel like?

He hadn't been aware of actively asking the question—or actively thinking or feeling it for that matter—but the answer seemed to materialize before him, like an item he had torn the house apart looking for but now, upon finding it unexpectedly in somewhere he could have sworn he had looked, discovered that he no longer needed.

It feels like defeat.

The answer puzzled him. The Amané he knew would never have had any reason to suffer defeat—she had never had anything to fight for. Ryou mulled over this puzzling response, watched it as it ran circles around his head, trying to find a place in his head with all the other things that made sense. But oddly enough, Ryou couldn't seem to make room for it. His busied mind refusing him sleep, he tossed and turned irritably under the covers.

Despite the apparent irrationality of her response, Ryou could sense the honesty behind it. Fluffing his pillow, he forced himself to acknowledge that, while his sister had never been aggressive or argumentative with anyone or anything, the least competitive person he could imagine, she felt that she was like losing something. Whatever that something could be, he could only stipulate, perhaps forever.

Does it hurt?

Not physically.

There was a stain to her voice, a shadow. It was if she were forcing herself to relieve memories that were too stabbing to recall, and the process was painful for her. Hoping that the morning would bring some sort of resolution, Ryou closed his eyes, though his mind did not rest. That night, he dreamed of fire and gold that tasted bitter and disappointment and anger, all directed inward. When he awoke, he throbbed inside as if someone had replaced his heart with a bowling ball.

-XII-

"Ryou, I have a present for you!" Ryou turned from his work, a long and boring list of chemical equations, and his eyes glowed as he met his father's. However, there was a minor air of suspicion lurking in his face as he tried not to get too excited. As far as gift giving went, his father did not have the best track record. On one of his trips abroad, Wyoming, the land of elegant arrows, with their inky black points and graceful sprigs of silky feather, what had his father returned with, grinning ear to ear? Some sort of mutant rabbit with antlers. Ryou shuddered at the thought of the creature. It was the kind of thing that appeared in nightmares and wouldn't go away.

Seeing his son wariness, he continued. "Now, don't worry, I _promise_ you'll like this one!" He jangled the package behind his back enticingly. It sounded heavy and important. When he could stand the suspense no longer, Ryou extended his hands out apprehensively, secretly enjoying the moments of anxious trepidation while he waited for his father's latest atrocious purchase to be presented to him.

It was gold. Gold with lines as soft and creamy as melted chocolate, smooth and heavy. It was in fairly good condition, considering its age. And rare, very rare. So his father told him.

-XIII-

"Other symptoms of dissociative identity disorder may include headache, amnesia, time loss, trances, and 'out of body experiences.' Some people with dissociative disorders have a tendency toward self-persecution, self-sabotage, and even violence (both self-inflicted and outwardly directed). As an example, someone with dissociative identity disorder may find themselves doing things they wouldn't normally do such as speeding, reckless driving, or stealing money from their employer or friend, yet they feel they are being compelled to do it. Some describe this feeling as being a passenger in their body rather than the driver. In other words, they truly believe they have no choice."

-XIV-

He was still waiting for a satisfactory answer. But Bakura could give him no answers. Doing his best imitation of the voice that he knew so well, he mumbled, "I don't know how things got so out of control…" He stared at his hands dejectedly.

The officer shifted some papers around on his desk nervously. Somehow, the air had changed. It was tighter, more controlled, about to snap or explode. He didn't think he would have noticed it if they had not been in such close quarters, but he could almost feel the air leaving the room, the blood leaving his body. It was if that boy was reeling it in, like a giant magnet that had just been directed at him. Struggling to find the words, he mustered up, "Yes, Mr. Bakura, that's what _I'd_ like to know as well."

Releasing a chuckle that was as dry as desert sand, Bakura replied, "Well, fortunately for you, you won't have much longer to wonder. Unfortunately for him, I don't think he'll ever get the answers he's looking for."

"And who, Mr. Bakura, could this 'him' be?"

Bakura emulated puzzlement. "Well, isn't that the question of the hour? I mean my host, of course."

The officer hadn't noticed until now, but he was bleeding. It must have happened when he had been trying to arrest the boy. He had put up quite a fight, yelling, screaming that it wasn't him, that he didn't know how he had gotten there. But the flow was heavy, as if the injury had just been inflicted in the past few minutes. He was momentarily distracted, but was committed to getting the truth out of this slightly deranged young man.

"Your…_host_, Mr. Bakura?"

"Yeah, that's right. My landlord. I'm entirely dependant on him in this world, and I owe quite a bit to him. He's very selfless, that Ryou."

It was getting harder to form coherent speech now. The officer could feel his throat closing up, his mind swimming in darkness that he couldn't surmount.

"And this host, you mean he is a friend of yours? A relative?"

Bakura was clearly getting annoyed with his incompetence. "No, he _is_ me. Another me, a shell of myself, if you will. I cannot exist in this world without him. But he is dependant on me as well, on the promise I can make him for assisting me until I accomplish my objective."

The world was going dark. He could feel himself slipping away, into a nothing so deep and immense that he was certain no human mind could ever have conceived of it. He wanted to hold himself in, to not slip and slide away from life and light so easily. But it was futile. With one last, gasping breath, he sputtered, "And what pr-promise is that?"

Bakura was towering over him, his face painted in maniacal laughter and delight as he recited, from a perfect and well-trained memory, the words that had bound Ryou to him as his servant forever: "And to thank you, I will help you realize your fallen dreams!"

Notes:

I own nothing.

The lines "It's not possible for people to go into comas by playing a game" and "And to thank you, I will help you realize your fallen dreams" are both lifted from the manga.

Sections III, VIII, and XIII are all from WebMD's article on dissociative identity disorder. The symptoms list Ryou is reading from in section IV is from the same place, though there are two that I didn't include.

Raito is my lame and irrelevant Death Note reference. I was following the Amané- Misa Amane- Light Yagami train of thought.

The title comes from the song "Crystal Ball" by Keane. The line finishes, "the more I think that I'm starting to disappear…" I thought it suited Ryou's situation pretty well.


End file.
